The 35 Millimeter Project
by Rynn Abhorsen
Summary: Pose, click, flash, captured forever. Take a picture so I'll always remember... Bebop Drabbles. [Mostly FayeSpike] Drabble Eighteen: Vitualamen Agna
1. The Last Dance

**On the Title: **35 mm is the size of film used to take photographs, and since this is a collection of almost-snapshots of the Bebop crew's life, it seems appropriate.

**On the drabbles:** These works will range from real drabbles (100 words or less) to short, short stories. Some will be loosely connected, some not. I have a list of 100 themes, but I can't positively say I will write 100 of these. All of this to say, just keep an open mind...

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"The Last Dance"

She asks him to dance with her for the first time on a Sunday. She is wearing a robe and her hair is wrapped in a towel and she looks so…_here he struggles for the words_…so **open, **that he does, holding her just close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin, knowing that she used all of the hot water, and finding that he doesn't care. The music that time is some slow waltz…_here he remembers that Jet likes to cut his trees to that kind of music…_

The second time she doesn't ask at all, just holds her hand out and he takes it in his and spins her around, her hair whipping in the wind, obscuring the emeralds that she calls eyes, and he inhales the scent of sunshine that follows her…._here he thinks that she smells of sunshine even when she cries…_They dance to a street performer, an old man with a guitar and a bongo drum that he switches between without order. When they stop dancing she is breathless and laughing and alive and happy in a way that he's never seen before…_and here he is sure that he will never see it again…_

Now he's sitting on the old, faded yellow couch, looking up at those emeralds and smelling that sunshine, and for the first time he asks her, "Dance with me, Faye?" He doesn't need to say it, but he does anyway, "dance with me…once last time."

Her sadness is almost tangible, he can almost _hold_ it, but he can't and so he holds her instead. She's frail in his arms, shaking…

There is no music this time.

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**A/N: **Review please. 


	2. Past

**A/N: **The next drabble...this one probably in need of some minor reworking. However, I'm drawing a blank on it, so if anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

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"Past"

I wanted you, you know.

I would have crawled on my hands and knees, begged like I promised myself I never would, if it meant you would have stayed.

I didn't, of course, and you wouldn't have stayed even if I had.

And now you're gone, really gone, gone like the life I imagined for us, gone like my past used to be.

You were right, you know.

I was better off never knowing…better off forgetting.

If I forgot you, would the hurt stop?

Or would another place just be empty and aching for you to come back?


	3. Scars

**A/N:** Big "thank-you"s to my reviewers, **Une see**, and **Mitora Jesus-Freak** (interesting name, by the way).

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"Scars"

There were three on his torso, a peppering of raised, sinewy flesh.

Four on his left arm and only one on his right, two burns and the others unidentifiable.

There was a slight nick on his chin, almost invisible to the untrained eye.

Her eyes were not untrained, for she had spent years preparing for this moment. It felt like she had been waiting for it her whole life, and her lips curved at the irony of it all. She said the words as if she had rehearsed them a thousand times before, which she had, in dreams.

"Yes, that's him."

They pulled up the white sheet, over his torso, his arms, his chin and then ushered her out into a cold hallway where they discussed what to do with the body. She knew the motions by rote, because it was two weeks ago that he left, two weeks ago that she started getting ready for this.

As she walked out of the morgue, she thought that it was right, somehow, for Spike to be identified by his scars.

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Review, please. 


	4. Future

**A/N:** Big "thank you"s to **Hotaru007**, **devileyez**, **une see, nusia, Uhlume, Protempora **and **Space Raider**.

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"Future"

The town of Plantersfield was small, quiet, and entirely unremarkable. Like most of the cities on Earth, few people lived there, most having died in the gate disaster. One June, a tall woman with green eyes and violet hair streaked with white walked into town. Visitors were a rarity, and visitors who weren't planning on stealing the town's meager supplies even more so. The woman was welcomed with open arms.

John Rockwell, the mayor of Plantersfield, or as close to one as they had, was the first to welcome her. He outstretched his wide, brown hand in greeting, saying "Welcome, ma'am. I'm Mayor Rockwell," he nodded then, liking the sound of it, "and this is Plantersfield. Welcome."

She didn't speak, just pressed some woolongs into his hand and pointed to the dilapidated chapel on the edge of town. Mayor Rockwell fingered the woolongs as if they were gold, seeing as Earth's economy had never recovered from that awful day so long ago, and 100 woolongs could buy an acre of land. He looked up to this newcomer with wonder in his eyes, and she merely pointed again to the chapel. Though he was uneducated, he was perceptive, and they repaired it, pulling out the rotting pews and musty old hymnals, replacing them with a bed, a stove, a table, and other niceties.

She moved in at the end of July, living simply in that once-holy building. The townspeople liked her well enough; she neither drank nor gambled. However, the green-eyed woman was not without her eccentricities. First off, she was _white_. Her clothing, white, her skin so pale it bordered on albino, her hair increasingly so. She never spoke, so the townspeople called her Lily after the moon-colored blossoms that soon grew around the door of the chapel in abundance.

One December, the rumor surfaced that the woman they knew as Lily had been the galaxy's most famed singer but had sworn to never make a sound after she lost the man she loved. Half the town scoffed at it, believing the alternative that she had once been a famous bounty hunter. However, the other half of the town believed it to be true, and so for Christmas they gave her an old record player and a few black, flat discs they didn't know what to do with. Soon the faint strains of music mixed together with the sweet, sad scent of lilies in the night air.

That next June, on the anniversary of Lily's arrival in Plantersfield, John Rockwell eased open the door to the mute woman's home. He was greeted with a sight that would wake him disoriented and aching for years to come: Lily, pallid, serene and beautiful in a way he couldn't describe, surrounded by the white petals of the flower whose name she bore. She was listening to the record player and crying as a statue must cry, without noise or expression. The tears dripped down, one after another as tragic, heavy piano notes filled the room. John stood on the edge of that threshold, fearing to intrude and breathless as he watched the afternoon sunlight filter through the old stained glass windows and fill the lilies, **all of them**, with color.


	5. Masks

**A/N:** "Thank you"s to **misfire**, **une see**,** mitora jesus-freak**, and **space raider**.

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"Masks"

She's leaning against the kitchen counter, filing her nails and pretending that she doesn't care. "Are you ever going to stop lying to me?"

He spews acrid fumes into the air, a human smokestack. "You want the truth?"

She stops her filing for a moment, and looks at him carefully, like she always does, with microscope precision. "Yeah"

"Probably not."

She starts again and the sound is like sandpaper against silk. "Masks aren't always used to hide, Spike."

"You take off yours, and then I'll take off mine."

"I can't."

"Why, 'cause you're not wearing one? That's bullshit."

"No, it's not bullshit. You're wearing a mask to keep _yourself_ from seeing, Spike, not to keep others from seeing _you_. You're looking through two holes in a paper bag so you don't have to look around and see how your actions affect people. That's a thousand times worse than just hiding."

He flicks his eyes, honey brown, up and down, side to side, almost as if he's looking for proof that what she says isn't true. "I can look wherever the hell I want," he says…

But the words echo in the hollow spaces; she's slipped away without him seeing….

Later he will realize that that's what bothers him the most.


	6. That Same Old Song and Dance

**A/N:** Thank you to **misfire**, **MitoraAkimori, une see, **and** space raider**.

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"That Same Old Song and Dance"

There was trouble in the living room.

"Bitch"

"Lunkhead"

"Tease."

"Asshole."

Jet, standing in the kitchen, paused in his washing of the dishes and listened for a moment.

"You're such an idiot, Spike!"

The Black Dog slumped his shoulders with a sigh and started drying the spoons, knowing what would come next. He mouthed the words in time as Spike said them; he had memorized the script long ago…

"Well if I'm an idiot then you're a whore, Faye!"

"You're such a JERK!"

Had Jet had any hair left he would have pulled it out due to their arguing, but as conditions stood he set the plates in the cabinet instead. The pair in the living room often had the same argument for the same reasons with the same words ending in the same result…which should be coming up any minute now…

"I love you, you know."

"I love you, too."

And in the kitchen, Jet Black smiled.

_It was just that same old song and dance…_

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**Review, please... **


	7. The Little Things

**A/N: **This drabble is set directly after **Cowboy Bebop: Knocking On Heaven's Door**, so if you haven't seen the movie, I can't positively say that you'll understand it. However, if you haven't seen it, you should do so at the nearest possible opportunity.

**A/N 2.0:** I would rate this drabble a T and up...if you can't stand anything remotely dark or disturbing, I would just click the back button now.

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"The Small Things"

Click, pause, click, pause, click, pause, click…

"You're back"

Spike lifts his head from the couch and speaks as the click of Faye's boots grows louder. By this point he's already determined several things; it's what he's good at, reading people and body language and learning something big from something small. By the smell that precedes her he expects that somewhere along the way she's encountered dead flesh. From the pause between every clacking step he expects her to be injured.

He does not expect her to look this way, however. Her eyes are puffy and swollen and there are red stripes and crusted blood on her wrists and ankles. She's a damsel in distress of sorts and guilt bleeds into the empty spaces in Spike's chest. She's been captured, held hostage, bound at hand and foot and no one did anything. Then again, he's been busy avoiding death in a trench coat and dark beard for the past week or so.

Her hair is tangled and dark, her stockings ripped all to hell and he wonders what in the big picture of Faye he's trying to keep himself from noticing…

And then he sees it.

Her yellow top is held together by a safety pin instead of a button and he can see the jagged red path of a knife blade starting at her neck and going down and down and down and disappearing into the frayed waistband of her shorts. He can smell the fear and the shame and the day-old sweat on her. First he thinks that she probably asked for it, tried using sex to bribe Vincent into letting her go. But then he recoils from the possibility, feeling cold and ugly at having entertained it. She didn't slide her shirt off of her shoulders, Vincent cut it apart. She never twined those long legs around him but had them forced open with a knife against her throat. And she didn't fake orgasm, she screamed and clawed and hoped with everything in her that Spike or Jet or hell, even Ed was going to bust down the door and stop what was happening to her.

But no one had, and Vincent had taken everything.

There are finger-shaped bruises on her chin and on her arms, and it is then that Spike sees the brown, dried blood on her inner thighs. He feels all hot-cold and electric, needs to close his eyes or give Faye a hug or something, anything to keep himself from seeing her. Oh god, she's standing in the doorway and she looks positively broken…

Her eyes are dead and she drops her keys on the coffee table and starts limping towards her room.

Click, pause, click, pause, click, pause…

Spike sits on the couch as her footsteps fade away. His head drops into his hands and he grinds his teeth together.

"God damn it."

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Review, por favor. 


	8. At the End of the Day

**A/N:** Thank you so much to all of my reviewers!

_"This is not about love,  
'Cause I am not in love.  
In fact I can't stop falling out.  
I miss that stupid ache…"_

_Fiona Apple, "Not About Love"_

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"At the End of the Day..."

It's a wild sort of dance when the lights go out.

They stumble out of a bar, and Faye giggles at something that may or may not be real. Spike has a half-smile on his face and the words come sliding out between loosened lips. "we are sooo wasted."

She leans against the cool wall for support, laughing and coughing at the same time. Multi-tasking is too much for her, and she dry heaves into a pile of old newspapers in between a slurred sentence which might be, "you're right."

"c'mere," he says, wobbling unsteadily on his too-long legs.

"wha?" she says, before he twists his long fingers in her red sweater and pulls her to him, pelvis to pelvis, chest to chest, aching heart to aching heart.

They fuck bathed in neon lights, or in shadows. Never in the day time, when he can see her and she can see him. Never without the safety that comes from anonymity. They fuck and close their eyes when they do.

Because as much as Faye wants to believe that she can fix him, she knows she can't. Because as much time as she spends dreaming of a future together, she knows a girl without a past and a guy who's still fighting his can't have one.

Because as deeply as Spike thinks that Faye might be right for him in a wrong kind of way, he knows he'll never find out. Because as much as he likes to say that she's an irritating shrew of a woman, he knows he's lying to himself. Again.

So at the end of the day they're not lovers or comrades or anything, really. They're just a not-so-normal girl and a not-so-normal boy, boiling away into space.

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Review, please. 


	9. Blue

A/N: This one is as sappy as they come. So, enjoy it. A thousand **thank you**'s to my reviewers!

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_ There's something about blue...  
Asked myself what it's all for,  
You know the funny thing about it,  
I couldn't answer... _

- Yoko Kanno "Blue"

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"Blue"

"Faye…Faye…get up, c'mon."

The first thing that she thinks upon opening her eyes is, "blue." It spreads about before her like spilt ink, loose and kinetic and rolling.

The sea. Beautiful white sand beaches in slanted hills, all sloping downward to that sucking-deep-down-crash-into-me-wild-abandon ocean.

Faye never thought that she would get over the color blue. Once upon a time she hated it, loathed it so completely that she threw away everything she owned in that god-awful color. Too sharp, too sad, too real…Too close to those eyes that had nearly taken everything she loved.

_Nearly_ being the most important word of course.

She's learning to love blue again, to think of it in terms of waves, of skies and cool cotton sheets. Blue doesn't have to mean destruction.

When Spike kisses her, she can taste coffee and cigarettes, (both of which she misses by subtle degrees) but behind that there is something else, something clean and light. That something is the taste of blue. And Faye has some blue in her as well, that's for sure. She has more of a blue frame of mind than anyone she's ever met.

And she's got the ring, that sapphire-and-diamonds concoction, that heart of a star, which she wears on a silver chain around her neck. The ring helps her love blue again.

She takes Spike's hand and he pulls her to her feet in the warm light of the sun. The breeze smells of salt and utter completion.

Oh yes, Faye Valentine is learning to love that color again. Spike smiles at her and slips his hands down from her pink, sunburned shoulders to rest on her gently rounded middle. His hands stay there, hovering on top of the blue sarong that's wrapped over her bathing suit; it barely reaches around her now, with only two months left. His hands stay there, over their child-that-will-be, and Faye places hers on top of his, pale-on-tan, girl-on-boy, blue-on-blue.

That _movement_, that _moment_, **that** is Faye and Spike reclaiming the color blue. Blue no longer means Julia. They can release her name into the sea breeze and let it be carried away. She doesn't have to be a part of them anymore. They will fill that void that Julia leaves a thousand times over with the life that Faye carries, and they will learn to love the color blue again, together.

---

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**Review, por favor! **


	10. Things Left Unsaid

**A/N:** Sorry about the long delay; I had competition for a school thing on top of work on top of school, so I haven't had much time to write.

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"Things Left Unsaid"

When she says, "So you managed to make it out alive," what she means to say is: _Thank god._

He replies, "Yeah, I did" and then asks for a cigarette, but what he means to say is: _I'm sorry that I hurt you. _

She doesn't answer but wants to say "_You broke my heart and I don't know if I can forgive you." _

He runs a hand through his hair, which means "_That's okay, I'm not sure I can, either." _

She digs through the couch cushions and pulls out a crumpled pack of smokes, which she then tosses to him. His eyebrows lift and she shrugs in response. Nonchalantly she says, "I quit," but she isn't really talking about the cigarettes.

_It's all or nothing from here on out, Spike. This is it and it's all that I can offer you._

_I can't say the things you need to hear, Faye. I can't promise you anything. _

He lights the cigarette and takes a deep drag, sucking it in like it's everything and he's a black hole.

Her body is screaming _"you left me."_

His posture, all liquid-smooth and untouchable, is as glaring as a stop sign, _"I can't be what you need and I'm sorry." _

He exhales the blue-black smoke and she nods on her way out, though he hasn't said a word.


	11. The End of the World

**A/N:** I'm really sorry about the long delay; life just kind of bitch-slapped me and I've been...ahem..._busy _for the past few months. Hopefully I'll get back to updating regularly, but we'll see. As I am wont to say: **qué será, será...**

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"The End of the World"

The Bebop floats serenely out in space…

_There are unconfirmed reports of…_

No movement, no lights, no life…

_Several terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for the…_

A dead ship, a ghost ship.

_Several religious groups are calling it the Apocalypse, a cataclysm of…_

Well, almost.

Faye Valentine is sitting on the couch in the middle of the Bebop, the sun in a universe of cold, impersonal steel. She has her knees drawn up to her chest, and her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin tucked behind them, too. Faye Valentine is trying to disappear within coils of flesh, trying to become stone.

The telescreen is on, illuminating the cabin with the ghost of light. Faye Valentine watches it and does not speak.

_The very old and the young suffer the most…_

_We here at KWSN News have with us Dr. Robert Davies, an expert in the field of…_

Two days ago someone released something on Venus and the next day exposure occurred on Mars. The virus is something like Ebola Zaire, something that is unheard of, with a mortality rate that is unheard of, and its victims were unheard of, until now. People are dying, dropping in the streets; stiffening up and locking with their mouths open, no screams no sound, and blood comes from everywhere, the pores and the mouth and the nose and they just _empty themselves_ of blood and fluid and viscera in a sudden and violent explosion.

_The government is advising people not to panic, to remain in their homes…_

People on Mars and Venus are dissolving, slipping out of their routines and homes and clothes and lives. People are dying out. Faye Valentine is sitting and watching the telescreen, and with every piece of footage she knows that, in all probability, everyone in that piece of film is dead.

_This virus is a slate-wiper; it causes death within hours…_

_This is Jane Addams, reporting from Venus. I cannot voice to you the horror, the absolute efficiency of this pathogen. We were exposed over three hours ago; we came too close to one of the Infected. I…I don't know how much longer I have. The cameraman is dead, the captain, dead. This is probably my last transmission. To my husband and my son, I just want to say that I love- _

Spike Spiegel has hit the mute button. A cigarette dangles loosely in his mouth, held in the little u-loop he makes with his lower lip. Faye does not turn or flinch or indeed, acknowledge him at all.

"How many?" he asks.

"Dunno," she replies in a voice that sounds three-days dead, "estimates go from 500,000 to 6 million or more. I don't…I don't-"

She stops here and brings a hand up to touch her trembling lips, to still her quaking. All the blood has drained from her face and she doesn't know where it has gone.

Spike sits down on the couch next to her; she rocks a bit as the cushions shift in response to his added weight. Slowly he puts an arm out and gathers her to him. She does not acknowledge the action; she has disappeared into the coils of flesh, she has turned into stone. But her cheek brushes the collar of his yellow shirt and she sags into him, boneless. She is limp as cooked noodles, no longer resisting but giving in…

He presses the mute button again, and the room is flooded with sound, with screams. And so Spike Speigel and Faye Valentine go back to watching the End of the World.


	12. Sunset

"Sunset"

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**rit·u·al**

any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.

Origin: 1560–70; L _rītuālis,_ equiv. to _rītu-,_ s. of _rītus_rite + _-ālis_ -al1

_Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006._

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He always speaks first. This wasn't planned, this coming together. It happened for the first time two, maybe three days after she first came aboard. Now, it is all the time. Now it is habit.

It goes like this: he comes out onto the deck in the evening whenever they're planetside, and she's already sitting at the prow. It doesn't matter where they're docked, in water, sand, a random spaceport or the middle of nowhere; she sits on the front edge of the _Bebop_ with her legs dangling out over the side, swinging free in the air. They watch the sunset (or sunset**s**, depending on the planet), watch the light change slowly over the curve of the horizon or the skyline, or the ocean, or their own shattered landscapes. Sometimes they smoke. But no matter what, he always speaks first. About the sunset, about the planet, about himself. That's what surprises him; he talks about himself.

In the beginning it's about his opinions on things, his favorite drink, color, animal. Trivial stuff. She shares hers, sometimes. And then, later, he talks about his past. She can't share, then, so she just listens, blowing o-rings of smoke into the air. Last, he tells her about his plans, about the things to come. She looks him in the eyes, dead on, and says, "that's bullshit."

He thinks he loves her, then.

Spike tells her about his plans in an effort to warn her, to keep her from getting accustomed, comfortable. This is not a ritual; this is a way of tiding himself over. So he tells himself, anyhow.

He remembers the beginning, now. The first time he sat down beside her she jumped a bit, too close for comfort. Faye's personal space extended past where he thought it should, considering the clothes she wore. Those clothes screamed _touch me_ but she was so resistant to even the slightest brush of skin on skin. That first time her shoulders were hunched up, as if she were drawn about something special in her lap, as if she were protecting some trinket or desire or hope. As if Spike were going to take that hope or desire from her.

His mouth twists into a smirk…he did, in the end. Damned woman's intuition.

Now he turns back and looks over his shoulder at the sun setting slowly on Mars, on him. He lights a cigarette.

This is a sunset that she will have to watch alone.


	13. Shipwreck

**A/N**: A contest, a contest! See the bottom of the page for the rules!

**Theme**: Shipwreck

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Jet Black is shoved halfway underneath a grimy conduit. He's holding a wrench in one hand, and a cigarette is clamped between his teeth. His voice wavers in and out of hearing.

"Stupid sonofa…_muttermutter_…breaking right when we're on our way to Ganymede, gonna…._grumble grumble_…that fucking mechanic on Mars, gonna wring his neck…"

His voice rises an octave while he imitates the mechanic, and he sounds like he's had one too many helium whippets, " 'Oh yes, Mistuh, this here K-10 freon-induction core'll keep your ship runnin' like a race horse, made uh pure Callisto steel, this'un will hold you fer months….fucking liar, that's what he is…._grumblemuttershitfuckityfuck_…"

Sitting on the couch, Spike is floating in and out of consciousness. He hears a screamed "GODDAM MARS-MONKEY" from down the hall, and his features contort into a smile. The _Bebop_ is busted. Again. Oh well…c'est la vie.

_Click-click-click-click_…

"So, the freon-induction core broke, huh?"

Faye.

Spike nods his head languidly, once, twice, and then lets it rest on the back of the hideous yellow couch. The word floats through his head looking for something to connect to…_yellow_…

_Yellow couch…yellow vinyl…sweaty fabric…sweaty skin….skin on skin…mmmm._

Damn, it's been awhile since he's been here, in this room in his head where he stores memories of a certain rating.

Jet is yelling at someone on the telescreen with so much rage his remaining hair might flee his head in fright. "Dammit, Lou, you told me the core would last another six weeks!"

A voice floats into the commons, matching Jet's fury. "I told you that EIGHT MONTHS AGO!"

There is more mumbling in response…_shititygrumblefuckassholefuckingmuttermaggot…_

Faye's voice is like velvet in Spike's ear. "Looks like we're wrecked for a while…"

"Mmmhmm"

Two of Faye's fingers walk along the edge of his shoulder, navigating the curve of his spine and neck, and onto the other arm. He can just barely feel the sharpness of her nails through his thin t-shirt.

"No bounties," she says, and this time her voice twines through his head like smoke, smoke like perfume…another wordpassenger, looking for another train to connect to.

_Perfume…the scarlet bottle on Faye's dresser…scarlet, like…lips…red lips…lips pouting in a mood, lips on food…lips on skin…lips on him…mmm._

He smiles, liking where this train is going.

Faye's voice drops lower, "Jet fixing the ship, Ed in her room. Everybody's…_occupied_." She lets the word hang in the air like a puppet on a string. And then she, the cruel puppetmaster, cuts the thread, "except us."

She's purring now… "aren't you _bored_? Isn't there _anything_…or…" Her nails rake across the skin of his arm, "_anyone_ that you'd rather be doing?"

Spike smiles. He likes where this train is going.

Jet bursts into profanity that carries through the airshaft, "Fuck me to next Tuesday!"

Spike blinks and looks at Faye. There eyes meet and the air around them combusts.

"Okay," Spike says, "I will."

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**A/N**: There are two references to popular (or semi-popular) Sci-fi within this chapter. If you can name both, you can pick the next theme out of the following five:

22. Christmas  
23. Valentines  
24. Dragonfly  
25. Caramel apple  
26. Telephone

So just leave it in a review (hopefully with some mention of whether or not you enjoyed it). The first person to get them both wins, and their theme will be up within the week!

Regards,

Rynn


	14. Every Secret That You Ever Had

**A/N**: Okay, the contest was a no-win situation. But, most of you got the first reference, an allusion to _Serenity_. The nod is contained in this bit of dialogue:

**Jet is yelling at someone on the telescreen with so much rage his remaining hair might flee his head in fright. "Dammit, Lou, you told me the core would last another six weeks!"**

**A voice floats into the commons, matching Jet's fury. "I told you that EIGHT MONTHS AGO!" **

The exchange is a reference to a scene early on in the movie between Kaylee and Mal. So, congrats to _**animecatdragon, kipling nori, **_and _**Iria**._

In truth, I was really surprised that no one caught on to the second reference. It is contained in this line:

**Spike nods his head languidly, once, twice, and then lets it rest on the back of the hideous yellow couch.**_** The word floats through his head looking for something to connect to…yellow…**_

The italicized bit is a word-for-word quote from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only in this case we aren't talking about a bulldozer.

So, I just went ahead and wrote another drabble on my own. _sticks out tongue_>

**Theme: Secret**

* * *

**"Every Secret That You Ever Had" **

It's been 3 years. Or 36 months. Or 1095 days or 26280 hours.

And now the Dead-man walking and the Shrew are meeting up in a bar on Callisto. He doesn't tell her that he's been following the _Bebop _around, or that he's been checking their shipping logs and their crew roster every month since he regained consciousness. He just tells her the blunt, absolutely insane truth. She listens, calmly (which is the most amazing thing out of all this).

So, now that that's out of the way, he tells her why he's really here: "I saw the kid, Faye."

She makes eye contact over the ridge of her shot glass and shrugs. "So?"

"So? So you have a _kid_!"

"Yep. A daughter."

He resists the urge to scream. "And it's just like a freakin' TV show now, huh? Jet Black and Faye Valentine and their happy little family in Space."

"Spike, your head would explode if you even began to have any idea what you were talking about."

"How long did you even wait, Faye, to fuck him? Was it the day after I left or did you wait a whole 48 hours out of respect for the dead? Must have been quick, since she's walking and all that. And when you got pregnant, then what? Did he smile? Was it a shotgun wedding? God, I can't even believe it!"

"You were DEAD, asshole."

"So let's just move right on to Jet, and have a kid? That's sure quick, huh?"

"Quite jumping to conclusions! She isn't Jet's, dumbass. We aren't married, either."

He knows this is bull. He's seen Jet's name on the passenger manifest under "caretaker" for the "Undeclared Minor."

"Huh, yeah, _okay_."

Faye rolls her eyes in response. "Well, alright, I mean _legally_ she's Jet's. He's her legal guardian and all that, but he's more of the gruff-but-lovable Uncle type."

"So he just hands her a Werther's Originals and ruffles her hair, huh? Fuck, Faye. If she isn't Jet's, then whose is she? Fuck, tell me it's not that queer Andy. If it's him I'll…I'll… "

"She isn't Andy's."

"Well then whose is she for fuck's sake?"

"She's mine. My kid. Well, Jet's her legal guardian, though, because if I was then she'd be my beneficiary, and inherit my debt when I went to that big casino in the sky. The plan is, when I die, my debt becomes the state's problem, not hers."

"Yours. Faye freaking Valentine, mother of the year. The pregnant bounty hunter, swollen ankles and all. Goddamn."

"She isn't mine by blood, Spike."

"Wh…who?"

"There's no easy way to say this…"

"SPIT IT OUT!"

"And _because_ there is no easy way to say this, and since you won't let me say it in good time or prepare you for it, I'm just going to lay it out. Dammit Spike, you're such a jerk."

"Faye, I swear to god…"

….

"She's Julia's kid."

….

"Guh...whu…whoa…wer…gluck…"

She waits for him to finish his random syllabic crossfire. Slowly, slowly, he finds his way to calm for long enough to manage "how".

"Three days after you go off to fight the monsters in your closet, we get this note. Says, 'if you want a second chance at life, come to apartment so-and-so, building yadda-yadda on Mars. Lives are at stake'. We figure it can't be coincidence, your death" _(she makes finger quotes) _"and the letter within a week. I think that you must have survived and be at the apartment. So I crash into this dingy slum in true Valentine style, cigarette in mouth and gun in hand…"

She trails off and downs the whiskey shooter on the card table separating them. Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she gives him a wobbly smile. One of the waiters puts a beer in front of her, and she shakes her head with a short, sharp laugh. "Not for me, no. After all, I gotta fly back and be somebody's mother when this is done."

So, Spike takes it.

He is in mid-gulp when Faye starts up again. "So I get to this apartment, right, expecting you. But instead I find this little girl, asleep and all alone. I rummage around, see what I can find, and all that's worth taking besides her is a birth certificate."

"What's her name?"

"Erin Nicole Stevens. Julia's last name. She's listed as the mother."

"So you took her?!"

"It wasn't like she had anybody else, fuckwit! And she was a _baby_. I couldn't just _leave_ her!"

Spike's brain is in fucking pieces on the floor. Faye. Faye _Valentine_ taking in Julia's child? Now he's no idiot, and he's not blind, either. He knew when he left that Faye was more than a bit enamored of him. And he'd be lying if he said there wasn't a part of him that reciprocated. Still is, maybe. Faye and Julia were competitors; Julia hated Faye because Faye made her think that he'd moved on, and Faye hated Julia because she kept him from doing so.

The Faye he knew wasn't exactly the forgiving type. Taking in her enemy's child, especially when she was still so raw with loss, simply didn't make sense.

Fays keeps talking like she doesn't know about the war going on in Spike's head. "She fit in right away. I mean, Jet can't turn away a stray to save his life, and she was just two years old. He's nicer to her than to anyone else. And when Ed came back, she was just so excited…took me a week to convince her that we couldn't change Erin's name to 'Franklin.' Julia had given Erin her name, and we couldn't just strip it away. Plus, Franklin? Jesus…"

"So you just became her mom? Just took over where Julia had left off? Fuck, Faye. I mean…well, just…fuck."

"Julia was never a part of Erin's life. As soon as she could, Julia heaped her off onto some woman Erin called "Auntie". I figure Julia did it to keep Erin a secret from the syndicate."

He takes another gulp of beer to keep himself sane.

"It was hard, at first," Fays admits, her voice growing softer. "I couldn't look even look at her without seeing…well, without seeing Julia. And believe me, the fact that I love Erin doesn't mean I have to like Julia. I _hate _her, even now. I was so scared that I would hate Erin, too, because of what her mother had done. But, I was all she had, and she became all that I had. It sounds dumb, but she really _was_ my second chance…or third…whichever.

"When we first took her in, I wasn't even sure I could take care of a house plant, much less a little girl! I didn't know if I had it in me to care about anything anymore. But a couple days after Erin got onboard, she got lost in the cargo hold. And when I couldn't find her, I swear to god, it was like my heart was in my throat. She was curled inside one of the shipping crates, just in fucking tears. And when she saw me, she threw her arms around my knees and started wailing. After that, I was _gone_. Poof! I was her mom. Didn't matter who her blood mother was, her dad. She was mine."

Spike is losing at keeping his cool. He presses the beer bottle, cold with condensation, to his forehead. _Feels good_, he thinks. _Okay, so after I left Faye adopted Julia's daughter, Erin. And Jet was totally fine with it. Oh, and Ed came back_. Sure, okay. Yeah, he has a handle on all that. Good.

"So, uh, who _is_ her dad?"

Faye's face is soft in the sunlight filtering through the paper-covered windows. He fights the sneaking suspicion that he thinks that she's beautiful.

"Think, Spike," she says, drawing circles in the water droplets on the table. "Erin is just about five. That means Julia got pregnant about five and a half years ago. Three of which you were "dead"and two of which you were on _Bebop_. And before you were on _Bebop_, you were on your own for about eight months."

Spike feels like a jackhammer and a chisel are arguing in his skull. And all this backwards math isn't helping matters either. "Jesus, Faye, I'm more than three-quarters drunk and you expect me to put two and two together? Help me out here!"

She lowers her eyes and seems far off, then. "Spike, the last time you were with Julia was between six and five and a half years ago…"

"Gluh…hurooogh…hwerk…"

"Yes, Spike. Hwerk."

"Guh…gleb…what?"

"She's yours, Spike. Yours…and Julia's."

"Oh man…oh man…oh _man_…"

Her voice is soft, pleading. "Come back. Come _home_, Spike. We've got some catching up to do."

So Spike pays the tab. Faye picks up her purse from the table. And they walk out of the bar, together.

* * *

**A/N: **This is an idea I've tossed around in my skull for awhile, the notion of Faye adopting Julia and Spike's kid as a way of keeping Spike alive…I started a multichapter fanfiction based on the subject once, but it never really materialized. Anyway, I just went into the drabble with the intention of writing a dialogue-driven piece, and I think I achieved it. So, yeah…

Review, por favor. Te amo!


	15. Glasses

**Theme: **Glasses

* * *

"Since when do you wear glasses?"

Faye looked up when he said this and smiled a little bit. Perched on top of her delicate nose were square-framed, black glasses. They made her look a little bookish, honestly, and peeled away much of the tough-girl veneer. Spike looked at those glasses and was mildly uncomfortable at how...how she looked like a teacher, and a damn fine one at that.

The lenses distorted her eyes a bit, making them larger…greener. Faye smiled at him from behind those glasses and said, "they're part of the bait. Apparently the bounty goes for university types…books and all that."

"You look weird."

"Hey, _thanks_," she said, and the sarcasm filled up the room. A slow grin spread across Spike's face like oil and Faye's eyebrows plunged downward. Smiles like that meant that he was about to do or say something stupid/infuriating.

"I bet I know what the bounty'll say," he said.

"Really now, Spike? This I have got to see."

"Why hello, there," he said, slicking back his puff-ball hair. Faye tried to ignore how he had dropped his voice at least an octave into the realm of some cheesy blues singer and responded with, "How do you do?"

"Baby," he said, placing one hand on the table in front of her and leaning oh-so-suavely to insinuate that they had now become close personal friends.

"Yeah, _baby_?"

"You must be a librarian, 'cause you've certainly increased MY circulation."

Faye's groan could be heard throughout the ship.

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Review please! 


	16. Three Wishes

**A/N: **Hello, dears. Glad to see you again. A darker one this time...

Enjoy!

**Theme**: Genie

* * *

Life ten years ago had been a whirl of bangbang shoot'em up you're dead. But since then she has been picked up by a tornado, whirled around and around and around until she can't be sure what's up or down or right or wrong or blackwhitewhatever. Nothing feels good to her anymore. Not hot baths, not cold baths, not silk or satin or sand or an-ee-thing. Everything catches against her skin, clings in all the wrong places. And she fucking _hates _that.

There is food in the bowl in front of her but it could be filled with rocks for all she cares. Food tastes like ash to her now.

When did this…this _nothing_ become everything?

"Gimme' three wishes," she says to the still air. Air that's a week past fresh, air that smells of gunmetal and emptiness. Air that positively _reeks_ of wrongtime, wrongplace, wrongperson. Air that could be sulfur, for all the good it does in her lungs.

"Just three," she repeats, lighting a cigarette, "hell, just two. I don't ask for much. Don't take up much space; don't talk too much, not anymore, at least. Gimme three wishes."

She doesn't know who she's talking to. Doesn't care, either. Talking to air. Everyone that ever mattered is in the air now, anyways. In the air and in the ash that sifts through the stillness and lands in her bowl. She watches it dissolve into her Odon noodles. Won't hurt the taste; she can't cook for shit.

Used to have a guy for that. A guy who'd cook vegetarian beef and bell peppers, wear a pink apron and tell her to fuck off when she'd make a snide comment. But that guy done gone. Her lips curve and she rethinks the thought, this time out loud: "He done gone."

She laughs but it comes out like a wheezing gasp. He woulda' asked how she was, if she needed sleep or food or someone to talk to, when he heard her sound like that. But he done gone.

"Wish one," she says, putting her cigarette in the ashtray and lifting some noodles to her lips, ash and all. "Wish there was a cure for a heart attack."

Damn faulty ticker took her friend away, bore him up into the sky without so much as an "excuse me, Mr. Black, but you are experiencing organ failure. Please wait while your brain-tissue goes soft with lack of O2. This condition is only temporary, and will give way to one more permanent shortly. Your patience is appreciated."

He done gone.

She chews, swallows, but feels just as empty as she did before. "Wish two. I wish there was something worth believing in."

There's not much left to her, these days. Not much but bones that rattle when she gets up and skin that doesn't feel anything anymore. Not much besides that; hair that's half-grey and an eye that doesn't see too well, compliments of a bounty who hit her a bit too hard with the butt of his gun.

Used to have someone who would have helped her out. Would have complained about it, sure, but still woulda' done something. Would have read the control room dials when her eye had gone all blurry for the umpteenth time. Would have picked her up when she fell down. Would have looked at her with that damnable mix of sincere pity and incredulity and said, "dammit, Valentine, what kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now?"

She sits down on the beat-up, worn, busted couch in the living room and puts her feet on the coffee table. Her cat, a comfortable orange and cream tabby, pads its way over and settles in her lap. Putting her hands in his longish fur, she strokes him until he purrs enough to let her know she still exists.

"Wish three," she says, feeling the cat shift in her lap and the couch shift, too. "I wish I had never come on this damn, dirty, godforsaken ship."

Silence greets her request, and she fights the urge to laugh. She doubts her lungs could handle it, anyway.

* * *

Reviews, please! 


	17. El Muerto En El Dia

**Theme**: One Touch

**A/N:** Enjoy the ambiguity, dears.

**Music I'm listening to**: Stars, _In Our Bedroom After the War  
_

* * *

"Los Muertos En El Dia"

He is fascinated by the turn of her ankle. That pale, slender column half-wrapped in cotton sheets printed with pictures of sheep jumping over fences. Her breaths are small, inconsequential, and with every contraction of her diaphragm, the hair hanging limp in front of her face billows just a bit.

Nothing to be salvaged here, he thinks. The things they never say fill up the spaces. Things like "I'm sorry" and "I understand" and "I _need_ this." Gaps that skin on skin cannot fix. Gaps that words and touches cannot bridge.

Everything about him is empty. Something in him rattles around like a pebble in a soda can, and his lungs are poison-grey balloons, filling him up with more space, more room, more empty.

Everything about her is full. That gracefully turned ankle, that graceless breath and limp hair. He tucks a few strands of it behind her ear.

Doomed from the beginning, he thinks. Inevitable as a heartbeat, involuntary as blinking, inevitable and involuntary as death. Explosion. Her fullness is a front, a shield. She bursts in stars and sparkles. Implosion. His emptiness is too much for her, now. He is ashes, crumbling further into himself at the slightest touch or breeze. Derelict.

He touches her face and expects something out of it; some jolt, some sense of completion, some difference. Something more than just her smooth, soft skin, slightly warm to the touch. She turns away, mumbles nonsense words.

Everything is nonsense. Nonsensical to think that they ever really had a chance, that they could make it work. Never could, can not, will not. Nothing left for either of them, here on the coast of something broken. Across shards and sharp wires. Nonsensical.

The mattress screams in protesting whispers when he gets up. The sheets are down around her waist, and when he tears his eyes away from her pert breasts, coated in starlight through the portal, he swears he can hear the ripping sound. Awake now, half-destroyed, she turns over, faces the wall. Half alive, he puts on his shoes.

He never was an optimist.

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Review, please. 


	18. Vitualamen Agna

Theme: Sacrifice

A/N: I don't know where this one came from...frenzy, I suppose, would be the best way to describe it. Enjoy.

* * *

She will never get used to this.

He is standing across the hallway, leaning up and out, sagging into the steel wall and letting his cigarette flame away. It's Turkish tobacco, slightly sweet and slow-burning; he never smoked them before he died.

Faye looks down at the rivets in the metal floor, telling herself that her eyes are burning because of the smoke, even though it never bothered her before. They burn and itch and she brings up a hand and brushes at them furiously. She finds what she was afraid was there. The salty warmth on her fingertips stings in the dry cracks of her cuticles and air whistles out from between her lips… "fuck."

And suddenly he is here, a hand on either side and his cigarette smoldering on the floor, the ashes coiling like something alive and one of his legs is between both of hers, rising up and parting her like the ocean. He is too close too close, filling her up with the smell of nicotine and suspicion because he can't possibly want more than this. She refuses to move as his tongue is hot against her skin, and she bites on her lips to keep from saying more more, and he mumbles something she doesn't know what and she is wrapped around his waist, surrounding him taking him in and she hates herself for it but hates him more in the instant before she can no longer think or hate.

"Fuck," she says, "fuck fuck fuck…" It stops being an ugly word halfway there, becomes something new and different, smoldering like his cigarette. It becomes her prayer, though for what she doesn't know.

"I…I…I…" she gasps in the emptiness inhales it in and lets it freeze her insides. The feeling is nothing new. Cold on the inside, warm on the out.

"Shut up," he suggests helpfully, and she pulls on his hair until he winces.

His hands are rough underneath her clothes, calluses scraping over her hipbones and kneading her skin like he is trying to make her into some other woman, a woman who is taller and more slender, a woman that Faye cannot will not be. A woman who deserves to be made love to, deserves more than this. Too much too much too close too false too masked…she squeezes her eyes shut and hates the sparks that explode behind them. Hates that it feels good to fall back into the familiar, rocking rhythm hates the pulsing crashing hates that she says, "fuck fuck fuck **Spike** fuck…" Hates that she defiles her prayer for him, defiles her body her mind her self-worth. Hates herself for believing that this is more than what it is, his replacement. She weeps. Weeps out of exhaustion and pleasure and pain and friction and disgust with him herself the ship the circumstances. Weeps because she knows what this is when he pulls away and sets her back on her feet, wipes a tear away with the pad of his thumb, and she can feel the calluses and ridges that form his fingerprint. She hates that she can't make this go away, when so much else has.

* * *

A/N: Review, please. 


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